Infasurf: Lifesaving Treatment for Premature Babies

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President John F. Kennedy would have had another heir had his
second son not died from respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). The
disease—caused by developmental insufficiency of surfactant
production and structural immaturity in the lungs—doomed many
premature babies before the development of Infasurf.

That drug was developed by UB researchers Edmund A. Egan, MD,
and Bruce A. Holm, PhD. Since 1999, nearly 500,000 premature
infants have been rescued with Infasurf, an exogenous surfactant
that decreases the incidence of RDS and associated mortality.

Egan, professor of pediatrics, physiology and biophysics, is
president and chief executive officer of ONY, the drug’s
manufacturer, located in UB’s Technology Incubator. Holm, who
died in 2011, was UB senior vice provost and executive director of
UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics
and Life Sciences as well as a professor of pediatrics,
gynecology-obstetrics and pharmacology.

An adult form of the drug, Pneumasurf, is currently in phase
three clinical trials. Pneumasurf is targeted at patients requiring
mechanical ventilators as a result of direct acute respiratory
distress syndrome, which affects some 100,000 previously healthy
Americans annually and has a 35 percent mortality rate.

Researcher Spotlight

Thomas
Russo, MD, is internationally known for his work with strains
of E. coli that cause infections outside the intestine and result
in morbidity worldwide due to pneumonia, urinary tract infections
and meningitis.

Gabriela
Popescu, PhD, is studying NMDA receptors in the brain, which
are involved in synaptic development, plasticity, memory and
learning, as well as in pathologies such as stroke,
neurodegeneration, chronic pain, addiction, schizophrenia and
epilepsy.

Daniel
Kosman, PhD, studies how organisms acquire and metabolize iron
and copper, intrinsically toxic metals essential to cellular
respiration and oxygen transport. One of his goals is to develop
antifungal drugs to treat infections in humans.

Suzanne
Laychock, PhD, is investigating the cellular mechanisms
regulating insulin secretion in pancreatic cells. Her group has
used pancreatic cells in primary culture to develop in vitro
systems that mimic aspects of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

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